PARIS — Simona Halep emphatically ended the impressive French Open run of 2016 champion Garbine Muguruza with a 6-1, 6-4 victory in the semifinals on Thursday.

Now Halep gets a fourth chance to win her first Grand Slam title.

Halep assured herself of retaining the No. 1 ranking and reached her third final at Roland Garros. She lost both of the previous ones in three sets, to Maria Sharapova in 2014 and to Jelena Ostapenko in 2017.

“I will try my best,” Halep told the crowd at Court Phillipe Chatrier, “and hopefully I will be better than last year.”

The Romanian also came up one victory shy of a major championship at the Australian Open in January, beaten there by Caroline Wozniacki.

That means Saturday’s final at the French Open will be Halep’s third title match in the past five Grand Slam tournaments.

“I’m happy,” she said, “that I can have another chance.”

She will play No. 10 Sloane Stephens or No. 13 Madison Keys for the trophy. Their semifinal later Thursday was the first between two American women at Roland Garros since 2002.

Stephens beat Keys in the U.S. Open final last September.

Muguruza, a two-time major champion, entered the semifinals having not lost a set in the tournament. She also was coming off a lopsided victory in the quarterfinals a day earlier, overwhelming five-time major champion Maria Sharapova 6-2, 6-1.

But it took Muguruza quite a while to get going against Halep, who managed to keep sending ball after ball back over the net.

Backed by fans who loudly chanted her first name between games, Halep went ahead 3-0 in only 15 minutes with the help of only one winner. Of her first 14 points, 13 arrived via errors by Muguruza — nine unforced, four forced.

It was 5-0 by the time Muguruza eventually claimed a game.

The second set was more of a test for Halep, who was ahead by a set and 3-0 before falling apart against Ostapenko a year ago.

Muguruza’s last stand came at 4-all in the second set, a 13-minute game in which she held three break points. But she failed to convert any of those, and Halep held there, before breaking at love to end it.